Audrey Watters

It’s only been a month since I reviewed Q1 2015’s ed-tech investment data, but with the acquisition of Lynda.com by LinkedIn this month, I thought all this was worth revisiting – particularly since the crack reporters at Pando wondered if that would “kill the ed tech space.”

For what it’s worth – according to my record-keeping at least, investment was up just slightly in April over March. (But both are down from January and February when massive investments in Lynda.com ($186 million), SoFi ($200 million), and 17zuoye ($100 million) certainly skewed the numbers).

Perhaps the most interesting story to watch this year is the growing number of acquisitions – big deals not just in terms of the dollar figures but in terms of the brands involved. In April, LinkedIn bought Lynda.com for $1,500,000,000, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt paid $575,000,000 for most of Scholastic’s ed-tech business. These are the largest acquisitions of the year, topping Rakuten's acquisition of Overdrive for $410,000,000 and Pluralsight's acquisition of Code School for $36,000,000.

Among 2015’s Biggest Ed-Tech Investments So Far:

Social Finance ($200,000,000)

Lynda.com ($186,000,000)

17zuoye ($100,000,000)

Yuantiku ($60,000,000)

NetDragon Education ($52,500,000)

Genshuixue ($50,000,000)

Instructure ($40,000,000)

FiftyThree ($30,000,000)

GuideSpark ($22,200,000)

XueXiBao ($20,000,000)

(As you can see half of the top funding rounds so far this year have gone to Chinese online education companies.)

Among 2015’s Most Active Investors So Far:

Kapor Capital

500 Startups

Deborah Quazzo

Great Oaks Ventures

New Schools Venture Fund

Download the data, and devise your own analysis. The GitHub repository is here.